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“The sea's own heart must needs wax proud
To have borne the world a child like thee”.

So wrote Swinburne in one of his more inflated moments. He
was extolling not Zealandia, Mother of the Free, but
apostrophising the Empire of the Good Queen's Jubilee in
1887.

Over Athens had presided the grey-eyed Pallas Athene,
helmeted, gold armour clad (when the armour wasn't being
melted down for the war effort); a figure of calm resolution,
her spear tip gleaming to the Ionian Sea. Some 2,000 years
later, Britain furbished up Britannia in Achilles' helmet,
classically robed and posed beside a cartwheel shield, and
armed with trident. Pax Britannica!

What of New Zealand, Britain of the South? These were the
days of the Athenaeums, days when the classics were sometimes
quoted in the colonial Parliament, days when Progress was
dawning as never Progress dawned before in dark bush yielding
to the plough.

“Out of the shadow, starlike still,
She rose up radiant in her right”,

says Swinburne. And so rose up Zealandia, full-armed, from
the head of first one artist, then another. Britannia's
Daughter, more than ocean-girt (no one ever mentioned
father), she became the mother-mistress symbol of young
nationhood. On music scores and programmes she wore her
cloche helmet – a sad sort of coal scuttle – with a sword
cast carelessly at her feet, the right hand clutching a
cornucopia pouring forth apples and pears while from the left
there dangled the caduceus. Depending on the skill of the
artist, her expression ranged from vacuous insipidity to a
crystal-gazing trance.

“How should not she best know, love best,
And best of all souls understand”,

asks Swinburne. How not indeed? They even named a weekly
paper after her, and a pub or two. And would-be bards,
agonising in the Poet's Corner of their local news sheet,
ceaselessly extolled her charms – Zealandia of the sea-girt
isles!

But greater fame was in store. Universal penny postage
(ah, Progress) swept her triumphantly onward and outward on
the flood of trivialities that makes up the postbag. From
1901 till 1909, in a well-washed red, her figure was daily
battered by the cancellation mark of every post office in the
land. Zealandia has suffered a sea change. She now stands on
the end of a wharf, leaning against a murky globe. The
caduceus shows signs of weighing heavy, and her right hand
rests unsteadily on the foremast of a proud steamer tossing
in mid-Tasman. She has lost her hat, and her tresses are
wildly windswept. There is a slight glaze to her eye: she
looks dissolute. Against the gale her nightie is reinforced
by a nether Kaiapoi rug. It is cold, and there's not a sailor
in sight.

“From light to light her eyes imperial
Turn, and require the further light”,

says Swinburne. The engraver was Henry Bourne “who had
great difficulty in producing a satisfactory figure owing to
the very poor model provided for him”.

Refaced but not disgraced, she has slipped away from our
midst. Well, we have had our worse symbols. There has been
some experimenting with Maori chiefs and fern leaves and moas
and kiwis. On many Government publications there is still a
crown and shield propped on one flank by a matted Maori with
taiaha and hair-do; and on the other – can it be? – yes!
Zealandia's Daughter solicitously chatting him, or chattingly
soliciting him in a sexless sort of way. Zealandia's nightie
has been cut down a bit, and the draughtsmanship is not even
as good as in Mother's day.

Co-creator

How to cite this page: 'A National Symbol?', from An Encyclopaedia of New Zealand, edited by A. H. McLintock, originally published in 1966.Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New ZealandURL: http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/1966/zealandia (accessed 19 Dec 2018)